The Supreme Court forces the Maello Town Council to take on the public services of Pinar de Puenteviejo

The Supreme Court has put an end to a dispute that has lasted for decades between the Pinar de Puenteviejo urbanization—a residential complex built in the early 1970s—and the Maello Town Council (Ávila). The dispute revolved around who should bear the cost of public services and maintenance of the colony.

The High Court has dismissed the council's cassation appeal against the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Castile and León from March 24 that upheld the previous ruling: it is the municipality that must take charge of water, electricity, sewage, and waste collection. With this resolution, a ruling from November 12, a long administrative and judicial process comes to an end, a community struggle that has achieved a victory in the Supreme Court. This triumph could become an important precedent that encourages other colonies in similar situations to turn to the courts.

The Supreme Court's ruling, to which text CincoDías has had access, upholds the first decision of the Administrative Court number 1 of Ávila, which stated that the Maello Town Council had to formally accept the urbanization—since its inception it had been managed by a private conservation entity—and take on the provision of basic municipal public services. The council has been ordered to pay 1,000 euros plus VAT for the cost of the process.

The Supreme Court judges consider that there is no “cassational interest” in delving into the substance of the matter because the judicial resolutions presented by the Maello Town Council in its writing as incoherent are not “contradictory.” The ruling also emphasizes that the provisions of state law that were alleged—since the Supreme Court is not the interpreter of autonomous regulations—are not necessary to resolve the case.

The judges also reject the council's argument about the damage to the general interest that may arise from the proliferation of this type of ruling. As Víctor Moralo, lawyer for the plaintiff entity—the Conservation Entity Pinar de Puenteviejo of Maello—and environmental law partner at Ecija explains, “the council also invoked an objective cassational interest so that the ruling of the trial court, and the legal basis it is based on, would create a doctrine that is severely detrimental to general interests, as its repercussions may require other Local Entities, in similar circumstances, to assume the provision of essential urban planning services and their maintenance and to initiate the liquidation of the conservation entity that was managing them.”